After teaching elementary and middle school for 4 years, Ansley McDurmon ’25 began exploring new career opportunities when she came to a revelation in her classroom. “I was teaching a unit on American environmentalism and the birth of that movement, and we read a couple of Supreme Court cases that I synthesized down for my seventh graders,” she explained. “I thought ‘wow, if I could read and synthesize cases every day, that would be an amazing job.’ After that realization, law school sounded like an obvious fit.”

McDurmon applied to several schools, but Vanderbilt stood out for a couple of reasons.

Academically, she was interested in international law and environmental law, “and Vanderbilt was really the only school in the top 20 that offered robust programs in both of those areas,” she said.

While vetting her choices, McDurmon also found that Vanderbilt offered the camaraderie and collaborative spirit she was looking for in a law school. “I called a bunch of people at every school I was accepted to,” she said, “and I talked to each Vanderbilt student for what felt like an hour each; it just felt comfortable and nice.”

McDurmon took a cue from her years as a teacher and treated her first year of law school like a job, arriving at school at eight and leaving by five. She “lived at the library,” where she made good friends with others that shared the same work schedule; they still meet over a year later. “We found each other, and ended up making an awesome study group,” she said.

She also found a mentor in Professor Michael Newton, who helped her work through her professional interests. “He helped me navigate a lot of the process and has encouraged me to listen to myself when making decisions about my future career,” McDurmon said.

Professor Newton encouraged her to apply for Vanderbilt in Venice, and when Global Rights Compliance contacted him seeking students for a summer internship with their Starvation Mobile Justice Team, he connected her.

McDurmon ended up attending the program and securing the internship, spending her summer first in Venice and then working for Starvation Mobile Justice Team remotely, from Piove di Sacco, 20 miles outside Venice. She found that the Vanderbilt in Venice coursework – International Arbitration, Corporate Law and Capital Market Regulation, and Counterterrorism – prepared her for the internship in very specific ways.

She worked with the Mobile Justice Team to build a case against Russian officials for blowing up the Kakhovka Dam, using the War Crime Starvation article under the Rome Statute. “The work I was doing came entirely out of the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without the courses I took during Vanderbilt in Venice.”

When McDurmon returned to Vanderbilt in the fall, she worked with Career Services to chart her next steps. She credits Rachel Kohler with helping her through identifying opportunities, as well as the networking and interviewing process. “She just walked me through every step,” McDurmon said. “Once we had narrowed down where I wanted to be and what type of law I wanted to practice, she helped me find firms, showed me how to reach out to them, and practice the kinds of conversations you have for interviews, which I had never done in my life.” She will intern with Sidley Austin for summer 2024 in Washington, D.C.

McDurmon sits on the Honor Council and is the founder of Knitigation, a club where students from different backgrounds meet to knit and connect. “While the club isn’t directly related to my legal interests, I’ve learned from my previous career that the opportunity to connect and befriend students with opposing viewpoints is an essential part of creating a healthy workspace,” she said.

As someone who returned to school for a career change, McDurmon understands that prospective law students in similar circumstances may find the decision nerve-racking. “It was for me,” she noted, “because I was worried that I had lost the ability to sit down and apply myself to rigorous studies.” But she points to the skills she learned as a teacher – time management, staying calm under pressure – that proved extremely useful in law school.

Her advice to career switchers looking at law school? “If you’re looking to for continual challenges and a way to use your brain every day, that is law. So if that’s what you’re looking for in a career change, I say go for it.”